Phonetic variability and grammatical knowledge: an articulatory study of Korean place assimilation

ness, possibly as a continuum from optional to obligatory and from gradient to categorical (see Scobbie 2007 for a related proposal). A simplified schematic representation of these continua, representing speaker K3’s (presumed) knowledge of coronal and labial assimilation, is shown in Fig. 6. On the optional/obligatory dimension, both processes are optional (variable), yet differ in the relative frequency of their application. On the gradient/categorical dimension, labial assimilation is fully categorical and phonological, while coronal assimilation in near-categorical and partly phonological/partly phonetic. Both optionality and gradience are further subject to various factors, such as phonological context, prosodic boundary and possibly word frequency. The view of the phonology–phonetics interface as a continuum between optional/gradient and obligatory/categorical properties captures the relatedness of ‘higher-level ’ phonological and ‘lower-level’ phonetic processes. The ‘truly phonological ’ (obligatory and categorical) and ‘truly phonetic’ (optional and gradient) processes can be seen as opposite poles of what essentially are the same phenomena. Predictably, many processes (like Korean place assimilation) would fall somewhere in between, having both phonological and phonetic properties. This view is also useful in understanding the evolution of phonological processes. Thus place assimilation may originate as a fully optional and gradient phonetic effect, triggered by articulatory pressures and perceptual biases (e.g. Ohala 1990, Jun 1995, Kochetov et al. 2007). The process, internalised by speakers and subject to incremental grammatical/lexical generalisations, will inevitably drift towards the obligatory/categorical ends of the continua, and will eventually acquire full phonological status. Since speakers’ linguistic generalisations are based on their individual experiences (Bybee 2001, Pierrehumbert 2001), some variation across speakers of the same dialect or language is fully expected. So is the variation in realisation of seemingly similar phonological processes in coronal assimilation